


Explosions at a Science Fair is like Death at a Funeral

by RobinNightngale



Series: Brentwood [7]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Robin (Comics)
Genre: Brentwood AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 16:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7275535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinNightngale/pseuds/RobinNightngale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The daring conclusion to the Brentwood science fair, and Jason decides to take this opportunity to truly learn what makes Tim Drake tick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Explosions at a Science Fair is like Death at a Funeral

    They had had this all worked out beforehand; Tim would explain the premise of their project and what they did while Jason made sure that the right chemicals were poured in the right order to get the disruptive effect they were looking for.  
  

    Now in front of the actual judges, it was all going perfectly. That is, until it made a gurgling sound. The two boys glanced at each other nervously, stepping towards their creation to see if something had gone wrong. In that split second the reaction went off, sending the contents of the volcano out into the air instead of down the paper mache sides.

    Jason’s eyes widened as he saw the white substance that mainly covered him and Tim, missing most of the teachers besides a few clipboards. “Is this… is this stuff sticky?” As soon as the words left Tim’s mouth, Jay was positive--he was killing Dick and not even Bruce would find his body.

    This had to be his handy work, it also explained why he’d been acting the way he had recently, all cutesy and dramatic and in his business; it had all been an intricate plan for payback. To normal people it might seem slightly excessive, but Jason had ruined the debriefing Dick had done for the Titans months ago by editing the information beyond the scope of believable intel. What originally had been a way for him to get back at Dick for laughing when he fell into a garbage barge, would have been fine if it was just in front of the Titans. But of course several JLA members chose that case to be interested in. He had hoped in vain that the almost month long silent treatment was his punishment.

    For now though, he forced himself to shelve the rage that made his whole body shake to help salvage their project. No way would he let Tim get caught up in their petty sibling battles, this was actually something that he cared about.

    Recomposing himself and turning his attention back to the judges, he could already tell that Tim was trying and failing to recover some ground. Just watching him told Jay the young man was fighting the uphill battle of very little understanding of their situation with desperation.

    “Ladies, gentlemen,” within seconds Jason had the most polite and kind tone in his arsenal out. “I think any thoughts of us doing this to ourselves can be set aside.” From the slightly stunned expressions on their faces his assumption paid off, while he was schooling himself they had given Tim a hard time about this being their fault. “As you can see,” he motioned to himself and Tim respectively, “we were caught directly in the blast, which seems a little backwards if we intended to cause this. Plus you saw our reactions, I doubt you can say we didn’t look as shocked as you all.” He could be persuasive when he needed to be, right now looked good for a high charm factor.  
One of the teachers shifted back and forth, “He is right, I’ve never seen a student here more intent on his studies. It isn’t likely that this was caused by them. Sabotage was expected when we did set this up…” The man finished his statement up with a resigned sigh, as if he’d held onto some glimmer of hope that sabotage wouldn’t pop its head up today before starting to look around the gym for anything suspicious.

    A loud sniff caught their attention, their science teacher looking resentfully at the pair, “Fine, we will evaluate you by the plan and the effort placed in your setup.” She seemed none too pleased with the idea they might get a ‘free ride’ on this assignment. Waving a dismissive hand in their direction, she looked down at her clipboard. “Go clean yourselves up, your results will be handed out tomorrow in class with the others. We shall look into the case of sabotage ourselves.”

    As the two of them headed out of the gymnasium, Jason shook his head. He almost felt bad for them, it wasn't like they'd ever find the real culprit or punish them. His own revenge would be determined more by how this affected their grade and how Tim reacted to the overall situation. First and foremost they had to get clean, which meant heading their separate ways.

    “Hey… Tim, I’m sorry the project blew up in our faces…” Jason had to stop himself from running a hand through his hair and making the preexisting mess even worse.  
Tim sighed a bit, looking begrudgingly into Jason’s eyes, “Let’s just see how the grades turn out, alright?”

    At some point in time the two had stopped walking, their paths diverging to separate living areas based off grade. The older boy still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going on inside Tim that he played down. Not that he could be blamed, technically they hadn’t spent a large amount of time with each other or really shared much of a trust.

    “Alright… see you tomorrow then,” Jay responded awkwardly thanking every deity in hearing range for the teachers canceling classes for this stupid event.

    “Yeah.”

    A hot shower did a world of good, and thankfully showed that whatever Dick had filled their volcano with came out with just a bit of scrubbing. It also gave him time to brood, or at least think over his next plan of action.

    From what he had seen the day before between Bruce and Tim, they knew each other and it was a huge secret. The fact that they even had this exchange as Bruce instead of Batman meant that him knowing their secret identities was highly possible. Though all these thoughts had occurred to him the evening before, now he could actually hatch his theories. For this not to ever come up as a red flag meant Bruce trusted the kid, if he did know and Jason wasn’t reading into things, and he kept it from everyone else that Tim knew. Entertaining the thought of straight out asking his father felt laughable and Dick might not even know so there was no asking him either.

    Toweling off, the young vigilante finally had a course of action. There was no better way to find out the extent of what Tim knew and also how the project affected him since he’d already exhausted the paper trail. Time to tail the kid.

    Again, the break from classes would play to his advantage. He could easily see how Tim spent his down time, and how he dealt with his efforts literally blowing up in his face. Most of the campus still occupied the gymnasium, which allowed him to move around freely without worry that someone would find his behavior suspicious.

    From the research he’d gathered from Bruce previously, he had a rough estimate on where his room was. A light shining out from a window confirmed that the probable room had an occupant. Thankfully, the tree line crept close enough to the building and at a decent angle compared to the window.

    Before leaving his dorm, Jason had double checked he wore his best non-Robin-skulking-around clothes and had his binoculars. None of it hindered his tree climbing abilities, but why he was up a tree opposite the dorms with everything would be a bit of a hard sale if caught.

    Bringing his binoculars out, Jay focused on the window, breathing a sigh of relief that yes the room belonged to Tim and that it gave him a clear line of sight to most of it. He was toweling off his hair as he sat on the edge of his bed, basically engulfed in ratty sweats and a t-shirt from some 90’s grunge band. Within a second, Jason’s eyes widened as he watched a pillow whip through the air and collide hard with bedroom door. He had no idea the kid had that sort of speed, aggression, or strength. Something told him that a large amount of Timothy Jackson Drake didn’t translate onto paper, either by design or sheer luck.

    The towel still sat on his head, hiding his face as rested his hands against it and sat still for a moment. It made Jason’s heart ache. Even from so far away he could feel the pain and disappoint coming off of Tim in waves. One day he’d find a way to make it up to him, that and he’d get Dick to beg for forgiveness as well. Their stupid pranks had gotten in the way of one of the few things Tim had tried hard at and Jason didn’t want to see the glimmer in his eyes die.

    He watched the younger man flop back onto the bed and stay there for a while, so he took the opportunity to look around the rest of the room. He could clearly tell what was Tim’s and what was his roommates. A tornado seemed to have hit the side Tim sat on, a very controlled one at that. Clothes may have hung from his chair and books looked haphazardly thrown about on his desk and shelves, but any area that could be considered shared space was devoid of anything that might get in the way or trip a person up. To Jay, that showed the young man had a level of consideration that made him think even better of this legendary bad boy.

    As time dragged on, the current Robin really wished he had some form of audio to do something for his current incurable boredom. For some reason Tim hadn’t moved from where he sat, and the towel still hung over his face so Jason couldn’t even stare at his face for entertainment.

    More time passed and boredom started to get the best of the young man. He even started sliding out of the tree unintentionally, that is before a loud crash made him leap almost out of his skin. Fumbling, he brought up his binoculars to see Tim was standing up, his chest heaving as the contents of his desk now laid scattered on the floor. The towel now sat around his neck, his hands shaking as the white knuckles gave Jason a keen idea of how hard his nails dug into his palms.

    For the teen wonder that was the last straw, he whipped out his phone and instantly hit Dick’s number. The line picked up and he didn’t even give his older brother a chance to comment.

    “Yes I fucking deserved it, but you did not have to do that to Tim,” Jay snarled between clenched teeth. No way in hell he’d let himself yell like he’d wish, that brings far too much attention then any well trained vigilante finds comfortable.

    The silence on the other end seemed to go on for almost as long as the one he saw from Tim minutes earlier. “He doesn’t put that much effort in normally, does he…?”

    “You went too fucking far.”

    Dick sighed and he could almost hear the man rubbing at his temples, “Yeah, I might have gotten a bit… caught up. I didn’t think there would be collateral damage to this.”

    “And if it damaged my grades?” Jay sounded slightly indignant at the implication that no consideration was given to that.

    “Eh, they could take one glue gunked volcano,” Dick spoke matter of factly, taking all the wind out of his little brother’s sails. “More to the point, what can I do now?”

    Jason paused, turning his attention back onto Tim, worry getting the best of him. He now sat on the floor parallel to his desk, the heals of his palms pressed against his eyes.

    “I’m not sure if it’s my place to answer that… We can take jabs at each other all we want, but it’s gonna be him you need to make this up to, it’s him you dragged into this like I dragged in the JLA on accident….” As he spoke he realized they both had made the same stupid mistake in retribution to the other.

    “Gonna guess that this silence means you too realized we’re both the same type of stupid?”

    “Sorta…”

    “Guess that really makes us even then.”

    “Yeah well, let’s see what the school decides to do with Tim and I, and we’ll see how you can make it even with Tim.”

    “Sounds fair enough Little Wing, go back to your stalking now.”

    Jason sputtered and almost fell out of the tree for the second time that day.

    “Bye!” Before he even could respond with his righteous fury his dickwad of an older brother had gone and hung up on him.

    Sulking and plotting his revenge seemed like a good way to spend a good deal of his time while he couldn’t see much of Tim and what was happening. He was only left to his own devices for so long though when his phone started ringing. The number didn’t seem familiar, but with how the day had gone who knew who sat on the other side.

    “Hello Mr. Todd?” A voice rang out as he picked up, it belonged to the teacher who had defended them as theirs seemed ready to put them on the pier.

    “Yes?”

    “We met earlier today at the science fair, I’m actually the head of the science department and I was hoping you could meet me at my office in a half hour. I have something to discuss with you and Mr. Drake.”

    Slightly stunned, Jason took a second to reply, “I, yeah, sure. I’ll be over there soon.” Their conversation ended and he brought the binoculars up to his eyes just in time to watch Tim shoot up and answer his own phone. Watching the color drain out of his comrades face wasn’t pleasant, but it did bring reality into focus for him. Even though their teacher had said tomorrow, this was the head of the department they were meeting with, he could operate on a different time schedule then her.

    Anxiety now starting to build in him, Jay watched Tim hang up before dropping down out of the tree and hurrying off to change. The best impression was the only one he could give right now, and showing up in his skulking around clothes and equipment would blow his cover and raise more questions than anyone here would be comfortable with.

    Time seemed to be moving faster than he liked, his limbs felt in slow motion, and his mind went through in a whirl as he trotted into the office almost a half hour later. Tim already sat in a chair across from the man, his composure frightened Jason slightly. It was almost as if a completely different entity than this Tim had trashed his side of the room.

    “Thank you both for coming at such short notice,” the teacher started as Jay slid into the seat next to Tim. “We’ve began to look into what happened with your project, and I wanted to clear up some things your teacher might have… implied. As far as we can tell so far, sabotage is evident. I would not worry about either of your grades, I will see to that.”

    In every book that mattered, this dude was too fricken good for this place according to Jason. He shouldn’t be too surprised though. Even places like Brentwood there could be diamonds in the rough.

    They both thanked him profusely, and make their way out of the office, walking in silence for a ways before even looking at each other.

    “Hey… you okay..? You look sorta queasy,” as he asked, Jay sounded uncertain, almost afraid he would cross a line and undo whatever they’d achieved recently.

    Tim took a deep breath and exhaled before responding, “Yeah, I will be, thank you for your concern.”

    “You really cool with this…?”

    “Who knows, I’ll process it and move on. It’s just school anyways.” The young man shrugged.

    “Well now I’m reassured, you’re making dismissive comments about the institution I adore, giving me the desire to shake you so you gotta be feeling back to normal.”

    When Tim laughed, that’s when Jay really knew he’d be alright and he wouldn’t have to kill Dick too badly.


End file.
